Left inset: Donald Trump walks from Marine One after arriving on the South Lawn of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right inset: U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes (U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee). Main: A golfer watches as trees are removed at East Potomac Park Golf Course, Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson).
A federal judge who has said she is tired of word games and obfuscation from the government about why hundreds of trees were felled at East Potomac Park over a holiday weekend has refused to halt her preliminary injunction, saying the Trump administration is "ignoring" her "legal analysis."
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes has already proposed her choice for a special master to investigate potential "ethical violations" of government lawyers in their representations to the court. And on Monday, she rejected what she saw as leeway for the "wholesale destruction" of East Potomac Park Golf Course.
In late October, the Joe Biden-appointed jurist said she could not "turn a blind eye" to the mismatch between DOJ lawyers' "representations" and what President Donald Trump openly posted about online regarding his plans to transform East Potomac Park into a championship-style course.
The judge found that the so-called "Washington National Plan" was "final," believing the "sitting President" when he said the course "will be closed" for a year as of Nov. 15. She interpreted the bulldozing of "hundreds" of "healthy, mature" trees as furthering the golf course project, not ensuring compliance with a 2019 Cultural Landscape Report or managing the existing course.
The D.C. Preservation League plaintiffs had warned for months that the government would exploit any opening.
"The Court stepped in only after the Government removed hundreds of trees to execute that plan, and in so doing bypassed the National Environmental Policy Act," Reyes said Monday, rejecting the DOJ's request for a stay pending appeal.
The judge said it's clear from "the record" that the government "intends—imminently" to "destroy" the "historic" course.
"If—as the Government has insisted since February—park officials had planned nothing more than to manage a golf course, the Court would have stayed in the gallery. As it had for months. The record, however, shows that during those same months DOI has been planning the opposite. Not to manage, but to destroy the historic East Potomac Golf Course," Reyes wrote. "And to replace it with a championship course designed by Tom Fazio, just as Plaintiffs have asserted."
Finding no reason to "doubt" her own ruling, Reyes kept the injunction in place.
"[T]he Government's behavior in this case has been nothing if not extraordinary," Reyes added. "The Government asks the Court to revisit its ruling. But it does so by recycling arguments the Court has already rejected. By arguing from a record that does not exist. And by ignoring the Court's legal analysis. Without any basis to doubt its earlier ruling, the Court will not stay the injunction."
The DOJ is separately opposing an order "staying or enjoining the closure" of the course, claiming the potential "redesign […] remains under deliberation by the National Park Service and is progressing through the compliance processes."
"Plaintiffs have not met their burden of demonstrating their entitlement to an order mandating that the course remain open," another filing said.
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